


send me to my death (i'll thank you for it)

by orphan_account



Category: Fortinbras - Lee Blessing, Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, but no knowledge of that play is necessary to understand this, just absolutely romantic on main, minor hurt/comfort, mix of modern and shakespearean language as far as dialogue goes, takes place immediately following fortinbras (blessing)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 20:45:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16541912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Horatio grapples with his guilt over things left undone, and Hamlet does his best to distract him. It figures that they both had to die to be happy, doesn't it?





	send me to my death (i'll thank you for it)

**Author's Note:**

> Just in case you're like most of the world and have no familiarity with Fortinbras--all you really need to know is that it's a "sequel" to Hamlet wherein Fortinbras has a brief and disastrous go at reforming Elsinore. Horatio tries to tell Hamlet's story, nobody believes him, Fortinbras spreads a story about an assassin killing the royal family, Horatio finally snaps and kills him and then himself. Fun times.

“You know,” Hamlet said, walking into the room slowly and carefully, as if he was trying to keep some sort of particularly timid wild creature from spooking. “You can’t keep this up forever. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to talk to me.”

Screwing up his face into a frown, Horatio scrambled wildly to his feet and set off toward the exit, and if not that, a wall, anything, any way to be anywhere but there, and then--and then stopped short, his wrist caught in the vise of Hamlet’s grip. After a desperate struggle proved futile, he first resorted to beating his fists against the late prince, then gave up, dropping limp and dejected. He kept his head down, refusing to meet Hamlet’s eyes.

“My lord, I would just as soon refuse you.”

“But why, Horatio? What offense have I lain upon thee?”

Horatio barked an incredulous laugh, but said nothing. Hamlet’s frown deepened. 

“Please,” he said, gentler. “I can do nothing to make it right if you continue refusing me communication.” 

“There’s nothing you can do to remedy your offense because you have  _ committed _ no offense, my lord. It is I who hath wronged thee, as thou know'st well. Please, let me alone. My shame is far too great to face you.”

“Shame--Horatio, surely you jest. What have you to feel shame for?” Troubled, Hamlet pulled Horatio in closer by virtue of the tight hold on his friend’s wrist, carefully wrapping his arms around Horatio’s middle from behind. Horatio tried to shrug him off, but the action lacked a certain conviction, even as he took it--he did not truly want to be alone.

“Please, don’t mock me now, Hamlet. I failed you. Your story will never be told.”

Understanding dawned slowly on Hamlet, but his only response was to tighten his hold. “Horatio,” he said, softly in his ear. “You have  _ never _ failed me.”

With this whispered assurance, Hamlet began to sway, still holding Horatio close, protectively. Horatio, caught in his own mind and the contemplation of his own sins, resisted still.

“Absent thee from felicity awhile and draw thy breath in pain to tell my story. Those were your  _ exact words, _ and yet, I have nothing accomplished! Thy story came to rest as surely as I did--I could not maintain mine own life long enough to spread the tale of yours. I was too  _ weak.” _

Resting his chin sharply on Horatio’s shoulder, Hamlet shook his head, murmuring soothing nothings. “You tried so hard, Horatio. Thou art the one person who fought to hear my story told, and for that I can ne’er fault thee.”

“You can. You  _ should. _ Good my lord, I failed to fulfill the request of your dying breath.”

“Not so. You told my story to young Fortinbras.”

“Yes, to Fortinbras, who ignored it and spread a lie about a Polish spy killing thee and thine relations before burying your murderer on sacred ground.”

“Claudius… has repented. I fault him not.”

“If your forgiveness to me be like your forgiveness to the late king, bother not me with it.”

“‘Tis not the same, for I have no forgiveness to offer thee. Horatio, you told others. Many, at the funeral, in the halls of the castle….”

“No one believed me.” Horatio spoke softly now, collapsing backward and remaining upright only by virtue of the hold Hamlet had around him. He was, above all else, simply defeated. Hamlet’s hands rubbed his arms soothingly, his lips ghosting over Horatio’s cheek.

“Fortinbras did.”

“He didn’t  _ care!” _ Breaking down once and for all, Horatio cried out in a wail, sinking with Hamlet down to the floor, where he allowed himself to be cradled in a parody of their last embrace. He had wanted to join Hamlet in death, then. Victory tasted as sweet and bitter as poisoned wine. “He let his own story spread, and that’s all anyone’s ever going to believe!”

Hamlet shook his head, musing. “I would not be thus assured. I gave to him in recent days a book in hopes of augmenting thine gracious tale. It might catch on. He even agreed to tell the true version of events, you know.”

“Before he died,” Horatio amended miserably. “Before I killed him, and with him, the last chance of anyone knowing the truth of thy story.”

“Nonsense. I daresay he’s still king--no one’s found a replacement yet, at any rate. Who knows, perhaps his mortality will find no preoccupation in the people’s minds.”

“Were that the case, my lord, you wouldst be our king still.”

Hamlet laughed. “Never believe it. I have not the temperament.”

Horatio, finally managing a smile from out beneath his gloomy demeanor, huffed out a breath of a laugh. “Nonsense,” he said. “You’d make a fine king.”

“I? Nay. You, on the other hand… Fortinbras is a friend of mine, fine, but Horatio, thou wast the only one alive fit to rule.”

Hamlet fixed his eyes upon Horatio’s as he said this, gaze tender, his long, elegant hand coming up to ghost lightly over Horatio’s cheek. Horatio could not rein in the flush that followed--odd, he supposed, that his body still felt so corporeal for all that he was a mere shade of his former self, clinging to undeath or second life in Elsinore lest he learn what awaited him beyond the veil, and find Hamlet not within it. He ducked his head. “Were my lord not dead, I expect they would have thee executed on counts of treason for saying so.” 

When he regained his composure, Horatio met Hamlet’s gaze once more, looking up from his lord’s lap with teasing eyes and a slowly spreading smile. Horatio did not deserve Hamlet, he thought, but it was so much more painful when he went without him--so far, he had been dead three days, and only in that moment had he not felt so. 

“Me, the lover of the king? I expect I have diplomatic immunity.” Hamlet’s voice took on a false haughtiness, and he gave a petulant sniff. Horatio laughed.

“Hmph. And if it were by mine own orders that you found your head on the chopping block, in reparation for thine incredible boldness?” He asked, poking a finger sharply into Hamlet’s ribs. 

Hamlet simply slid his fingers through Horatio’s in a thoughtful manner, his verbal response a low hum. 

“I would not protest my fate for a moment if it came by virtue of thine wishes,” Hamlet promised. “To die for you, _ my lord, _ would be a sublime thing. My one regret after all that hath passed is that I sit here, my life behind me, having never seized the opportunity.”

A shudder wracked Horatio’s spine at the admission, the whispered title he was not fit for whispered low in his ears, for him and him alone. He could have wept with it.

“It is a shared regret, then,” he reasoned. “For thou wouldst not permit me die with thee.”

No, rather, Hamlet had bid him cling to a life he had no space in anymore, lost without Hamlet, without purpose. He had followed, attempted to aid Fortinbras, while he could, but the frustration and agony of living had started as a pit deep in his heart and had only grown from there, consuming him like a fire left to burn. Horatio had lived with only one driving force, the need to have Hamlet’s story told--and he had failed even that.

Hamlet seemed to feel Horatio curl smaller in his arms, for he shifted his weight, turning so that they were facing one another. In this new position, Horatio averted his gaze, feeling embarrassed, naked. Hamlet’s pale eyes had always been able to bore into his very soul; the cast of death and the lack of a body to hide it behind had only made the effect more unnerving. 

“I never meant to cause thee pain, asking you to persist in the world. I had hoped that while carrying out my last request of thee, some worldly fancy would strike thy core, and thereby give reason to live on in my wake.” Hamlet brought their intertwined hands up to his mouth, pressed a kiss to Horatio’s palm. “I wanted to give thee time enough to find something better and not give way your life to rash decisions. I had hoped thou wouldst find happiness.”

“You would have me take a wife? Weather a loveless marriage, father children into a world I did not wish to linger in myself? I could not. My lord, there was no love in a world devoid of thee.”

For the first time, Hamlet was the one to turn his head away, to drop his gaze from Horatio’s eyes as if he had failed him. As if Hamlet could possibly. A smile still lingered on his lips, but it was a miserable one indeed.

“My sweet Horatio. I should never have bid thee follow me to this place. There is something rotten at the core of this state, and through my touch, I allowed it to take thee.”

Horatio raised his hand that remained yet empty to Hamlet’s face, cupping his head gently and turning it so he could meet Hamlet’s eyes. “There exists no world wherein I would watch you drown without me beside you. If Elsinore wast to be thy demise, then my fate was always thus.”

“So much ado for a crown of thorns.”

“Think not on it. Come, let the living bother themselves with the poison and prestige of this palace tonight--thou hath given more than thy dues to Denmark. Take thy hard-won rest.”

Hamlet’s miserable smile turned genuine once more, his expression radiating affection and devotion and, incredibly, all of it for him. 

“You need only ask, Horatio.” Hamlet brushed his lips over Horatio’s neck, up his jaw. “In death, I will be thy servant. If thou hath any request of me, you need only say the word.”

Words were not the first thing on Horatio’s mind just then. Overwhelmed with affection, with unsaid declarations and devotions and adoration that he hadn’t possibly been able to contain or even understand when he had still toiled under the veil of life, he pulled Hamlet down into a lingering kiss. It was not fervent, not rushed; the promise of eternity quelled the need for such an excitement, and Horatio simply wanted to live in that moment for the rest of it. They had been through so much to get there, but they had each other now, each other and no one else, and this kiss. In the absence of a need to come up for air, Horatio spent a few moments wondering if he really could stay like this forever, if he had been good enough in his life to deserve a heaven such, and then he was thinking nothing at all, because Hamlet flooded his senses, overtook his very being, and nothing else had ever, ever mattered.


End file.
